AT&T Fires Back at MCI/WorldCom Regarding Fraud Charges

AT&T fired back at MCI/WorldCom regarding the ongoing saga of call-termination fraud and MCI's pending emergence from bankruptcy protection. In a public statement and in a filing with the U.S. bankruptcy court, AT&T said the that MCI/WorldCom's response of Monday, 04-Aug-03, purposely avoided addressing the charge that AT&T had been duped into paying termination fees that should have been paid by WorldCom. While acknowledging that least cost routing is the common practice of shopping for the lowest access charge available from the terminating carrier, AT&T alleges that MCI deceptively caused it (AT&T) to pay that terminating access charge. "We're talking about the difference between shopping for bargains and shopping with somebody else's credit card. The latter is clearly a crime that people can go to jail for," said AT&T Chief Counsel James Cicconi.


AT&T's filing today also cited additional instances of domestic U.S. Government telephone calls that were routed through Canada for completion, including calls for the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy.


Further, the AT&T filing included examples of in-state calls between the Wisconsin district offices of U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisconsin.). AT&T alleges that these offices are pre-subscribed to MCI/WorldCom for long-distance calling, but calls between the offices were routed over AT&T's network after being diverted through Canada.


Elsewhere in its filing, AT&T outlined the elaborate steps taken by MCI/WorldCom to disguise the fraud.
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